GitHub apologized on Sunday and offered a former employee his job after a “significant error of judgment and procedure” was found in the investigation after the man, who is Jewish, was fired for warning colleagues on Capitol Day. attention to Nazi riots.
GitHub, the code-sharing site owned by Microsoft Corp MSFT,
also said that his head of human resources had resigned.
The unnamed employee was fired on January 8, two days after posting a message to his colleagues in Washington, DC on an internal Slack channel: “Stay safe friends, Nazis are about it.” Another employee reportedly took offense and complained to the HR.
Among the far-right factions that took part in the January 6 riot at the Capitol, which killed five people, were white rulers who displayed Nazi shirts and banners in public.
The shooting caused a stir, both on GitHub and online. In a blog post on Sunday, Erica Brescia, chief operating officer of GitHub, said that the company started an investigation into the case last week, which found that the shooting was wrong.
“In light of these findings, we immediately reversed the decision to divorce the employee and we are in touch with his representative,” she wrote. “We want to say to the employee in public: we sincerely apologize.”
Brescia said the company’s HR chief, whom she did not name, “took personal responsibility and resigned.” Carrie Olesen was the head of GitHub’s head of human resources.
Brescia added that “employees in internal discussions can express their concerns about Nazis, anti-Semitism, white supremacy or any other form of discrimination or harassment.”